Exactly 2 years ago to the day I planted a couple of pineapple guava plants at the front of the house. Maybe there’s something special about the two year mark that nature finally decides to do her thing. Whatever the case while I was making the rounds I noticed this blossom. Kind of hard to miss.
There were only the two, but it was an encouraging sign that at some point I might see a few more and maybe even get a little bit of fruit.
Happy Friday and happy gardening!
Not sure if it’s really spring, or we just went right into summer. In any case, I wasn’t sure whether I was going to put a garden in this year. However, the beautiful weather coulpled with my mascohistic tendencies seem to have gotten the better of me.
The plot was completely overrun with weeds, but I was able to get that squared away after a good hour of digging. It was pretty warm out, my wife brought me some water and suggested I take a break..I couldn’t, once I get started on something I need to finish it…
Mixed in whatever was left from the composting bin and then made mounds to plant the seeds. I overplanted so once things start sprouting I’ll need to thin them out.
This year I used a grease pen and row markers so I could remember what I planted and where. Here’s a list of what I planted, everything is from seed, so I have my doubts about the tomatoes. Will just have to wait and see:
It’s been a dry spring, so I’m having to supplement by watering from the rain barrels and they’re almost empty. May reinstall the drip irrigation if it get’s to be too much of a hassle.
Happy gardening!!
The prospect of grafting one apple variety onto another is appealing for a number of reasons.First, if you’re successful you can get multiple apple varieties from one tree, which in and of itself is pretty cool, second by virtue of the first you have the advantage of saving space. You don’t need to plant as many trees. Just graft away to your hearts content and have as many varieties of apples as you want.
In the interest of full disclosure, I’d barely consider myself and amateur grafter. My first attempt about 2 years ago wasn’t successful.
While I had done some research, I was just too anxious to do something and in doing so made some rookie mistakes. Here they are.
There are lots of places where you can exchange or get different kinds of scion wood. I got mine from someone on the growingfruit.org site. I won’t bore you with the details, you can find tons of information out there. A great source besides growingfruit.org is Steven Edholm’s site, skillcult.com. Steven is a master at grafting and has numerous videos on the subject.
I grafted about 5 pieces of Roxbury onto to my various trees (3/15). Here are a few pictures of the final result. My grafts are wrapped with electrical tape and then sealed up with Tanglefoot pruning sealer. Word of advice, if you use this stuff wear gloves.
I’m not expecting all of the grafts to make it. If it’s only one or two I’ll be thrilled. At this point the grafts have been in place for about 2 weeks and (knock wood) don’t show any signs of drying out. Let’s hope the trend continues.
Happy gardening!
This is pretty exciting. I’m feeling confident that we might actually get some apples this year from the Dorsett Golden. It’s the oldest apple tree in my “orchard”, kind of by default because none of the others survived. Checked my notes and I’ve lost at least 4 or 5 other trees over the course of the last two years.
Anyway, it’s just a healthy vigorous tree with lots of new growth and fuit (hopefully the squirrels won’t notice). You can see the shape of the tiny apples in the second picture. The Dorsett will fruit without a pollinator, but it does better with one. Unfortunately, none of my other trees are flowering at this time. The result is usually a lower yield and the fruit will kind of be an oblong shape, but that won’t affect the flavor. I’ll probably wind up thinning these out to just a couple per cluster so the fruit will get larger, but I’m still deciding. Will post up more pictures as the fruit continues to grow..
Happy gardening!
Time for an update..I’ve been away for a while, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy around the yard. Since spring is here and stuff is busting out all over, I’ll be posting up pictures of some of the changes I’ve made to the home orchard..Had a few failures, added some new trees and even tried my hand again at grafting.
Got a new phone that takes much better pictures was able to get some nice close ups of the bees at work. I’ve noticed a lot more bee activity than in previous years, so I’m taking that as a good sign.
Anyway, for the two or three of you who follow this blog hopefully you’ll enjoy the return of my gardening adventures. Thanks for reading!
jaxsuburbangarden 